origins of symmetry
yuugiou fanfiction
ryuujitsu & co.
Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Egyptology is the close study of asteroids. Asteroids that brought the aliens that built the pyramids, perhaps…
A/N: This is basically a story about the YGO cast romping about the universe. Plus giant robots. Plus snogging. And loneliness and isolation and slow creeping sadness and finding your place and your counterpart in the vastness of space, too. M for language, violence, and other mature situations! Other warnings: Appalling science. I am no physicist.
Suggestions for reading: If you have a Muse album or two, put them on!
Far away; this ship is taking me far away
Far away from the memories of the people who care if I live or die
-Muse, "Starlight"
00. Ryou guides the ship with a single cold hand. The other is being squeezed between his thighs for warmth. He tugs at the wheel and the ancient Ki-97 Toryu swings gently port, over the first of the evening's lights glowing in the apartments of the valley. The Kado River cuts through the center of the sphere like a strip of thick black velvet. The external mirrors of Colony YG0 have pulled back to allow for nightfall—later than is usual, to simulate the lengthening of days. Endless stars rise beyond the glass panels.
He docks with little trouble at North Bay, tethers the Toryu, and takes the seven-thirty shuttle into Domino City.
01. YG0, like many of its inhabitants, is old—going on ninety. At sundown the birds erupt out of the trees—because they can feel the rattling of the glass and the creaking of the mirror panels, the subtle shifts in air pressure, it is said. It's true that the air is staler, and that the ground shivers at times. But the wheels and gears are not grinding to a halt: Upsilon Gamma Zero will not wind down for another five hundred years. By then it will have been abandoned; rendered obsolete, a decrepit fueling station if it is to be anything at all, its inhabitants moved on to bigger and better things: the Z and Alpha cylinders. There is a new Alpha in the Yunnan system, a city of millions.
Domino, by contrast, is a city of thousands—eleven thousand, if the latest census is to be believed. There have been few births. The city elders were babies when the ships took them to the outer circle of glistening, new, uninhabited colonies. Now, most parents and grandparents are long dead. And even the children have dwindled.
It is a lonely colony. The closest of its brethren, the smaller YT3, lies seven days away by fastest ship or suit. Ryou, the transporter, former pilot, has done the distance in five.
02. The interior of Domino City's Number Three curry joint is brightly lit, the walls sponged yellow. Business is steady and always good on weekends. Monday through Sunday, Honda Hiroto's high school friends drift in and out, joining the other regulars at the counter. On Saturday nights, though, they take a booth by the window, and stay forever, sometimes until morning, and Honda brings the beers and sits down beside them. It has been a weekly tradition since before the war, and tonight Ryou is late.
The others are already there, gathered around an empty hotpot: Mutou Yuugi, with his little legs dangling, at one side beside Honda; Jounouchi Katsuya, mechanic, and Mazaki Anzu, dancer, at the other.
Jounouchi is in the middle of some uproariously funny joke, Anzu and Honda enthralled, cheesy enka throbbing through shoddy old speakers; only Yuugi looks up at the sound of the bell. He smiles—gently—everything about Yuugi is gentle—and waves Ryou over.
Jounouchi breaks off. "Look who's back in town!"
"Ehm," Ryou tries, "it's a bit, ah, hang on—" He flounders a minute, looking for an empty chair to pull up and finding none.
"Oh, sit down," Anzu says, laughing, and she hooks her arm around his and drags him down beside her. "We're all friends here; we can stand being a little squashed—"
"Meat!" Honda shouts at the kitchen. Okay, boss, the kitchen shouts back. Honda slides a fifth beer across the table, grinning, and Ryou doesn't register the movement immediately, almost lets it tip before he catches it.
"Welcome back, Ryou-kun," Yuugi says seriously.
"Mm, yeah, welcome back, and feel free to squash us some more," Jounouchi says. "Hope you showered—"
"Fresh as a daisy," Anzu declares, her nose sudden and cold against the nape of Ryou's neck.
"I always smell nice," Ryou says, it's, erm, pear, actually, lamely, but Jounouchi leans in and talks over him:
"So, she's got this Shadow Ghoul model named Teddy of all the goddamned things, never lets me near it, but she's all over Yuugi, and I think he likes it—"
"Wh—hey, she's just a kid!" Yuugi protests.
"Oh, Ryou, you have to listen to this," Anzu says. "Yuugi's been unfaithful, apparently—start over, Jounouchi-kun. He has to hear it from the beginning."
Jounouchi starts over, flapping his hands. Ryou passes the beer bottle from one hand to the other, smiling at appropriate moments, and takes a good long look at all of them. Every time he comes back to Domino he is shocked by their faces—eyes and noses and chins stranger, harder, wider, never quite in line with his memory of them.
Honda and Jounouchi are a pair, eternally scruffy, apron and jacket slick and stained with vegetable and engine oil. Under the dirt and the ugly Medusa-knot of scars, the skin of Jounouchi's face is tanned: when he's not at Yuugi's shop, he's at the southern pole scouting new customers, catching the brunt of the sunlight. Everything about him is warm and boisterous, open; he's spread out, long and lean, legs splayed, practically in Anzu's lap. Ryou imagines civilian life is doing him good. The Jounouchi of five years ago was a stray, snarling and snapping at anyone who got close enough to be bitten.
Yuugi has done a better job cleaning himself up—he's even wearing clean pants, though there is still a smear of grease on his chin. Spare keys to his grandfather's shop dangle around his neck. He has not grown taller, but his face has sharpened, the schoolboy softness finally leaving his cheeks. By all accounts, Yuugi's adolescence was painful, gawky, porn- and pimple-filled, and only recently past, but to Ryou, Yuugi has always seemed wiser than his years. Since the war there has been a sadness in Yuugi, too—something that lingers quiet and solemn. They have all noticed it, and it discomfits them, as much as Yuugi tries to hide it.
Anzu's hair is longer, and her face is rounder, smiling rosily. The engagement ring twinkles as she passes Ryou a bowl and chopsticks. It has been eight months since Yuugi proposed on the riverbank, twelve months since Ryou brought the small milky stone from Gamma Seven, a real pink seed pearl, no larger than a sliver of fingernail—
"Must be nice," Anzu says. "Seeing the stars up close and personal—walking downtown in a big city!" She laughs. "I guess you don't see shows when you're on the job, though."
Ryou smiles and says nothing. Anzu is wearing soft pinks and yellows and has a little charm bracelet on her left wrist—dangling silver ballet shoes. Thirty-six times she's danced on the Domino Civic stage. In a year, she will have had forty recitals on that little wooden platform, and then she will retire.
"Must be nice," Anzu repeats, and sighs a bit, and fiddles with her straw. The pearl glows on her finger.
—The new plate arrives, heavy and cold, red and green with beef and cabbage. They watch the boiling pot in silence; then Jounouchi and Honda lunge.
"Pig!" Honda says, subsiding.
"Harrup—harrup, you," says Jounouchi thickly, cabbage trailing limply down his chin. He manages to swallow, although it's a near thing, and finish his story about Yuugi's bratty blonde stalkerette, casting about with enormous sweeping motions that knock the napkin dispenser off the table. Anzu collapses into folded arms. "I can't breathe," she says; Yuugi pats her arm with a besotted smile.
The biggest news in the quadrant—the unrepentantly corrupt Jinrai Hattori finally taken into custody, denounced by colony and coalition alike: eighty billion yuan embezzled. Ryou nods. He remembers hearing about it, drifting in and out of sleep with the Toryu on autopilot, en route to Yunfeng.
Honda cuts in before Jounouchi can begin another story. "I heard from old Arthur a few days ago," he says. "Remember that huge explosion on Gamma-gamma-twenty—killed some minor treasury official? It's official: Bakura was behind it."
"Took them long enough," Jounouchi says, incredulous. "Who the hell else could have done it?"
Bakura is a faceless specter to most, but for the past three years he has been a suspect behind every attack and assassination across the Alliance. YG0 in its quiet pocket of space is in little danger, but elsewhere across the universe the heads of state tremble and double their guard. During a six-month lull it was thought he had been killed, but last January the attacks resumed, growing in frequency—always singular assassinations, always at the edge of Allied territory, always creeping inward.
Bakura's motives are totally unknown. The analysts have made him out to be a Marxist, a socialist, an anarchist, a fascist, a fundamentalist, a separatist, a communist, a terrorist, a torusist, a pirate, an anti-colonist—at the very least, a madman.
"I think I've met him, actually," Ryou says.
There is a pause.
"What?" Anzu and Yuugi exclaim, almost in unison. Anzu goes on. "How? No way!"
Jounouchi laughs. "No, definitely no way," he says. "I can't believe that."
Ryou shrugs. He says, mildly, "I think I shot him down—during the war. You know." He toys with his bowl and waits for them to chuckle and move on, ha ha, very funny, Ryou—
Anzu and Honda are looking at him, almost warily. Jounouchi's laughter has taken on a nervous tinge. "Shit, man," he says, wide-eyed. "Every time I see you, you're so sweet and quiet. I forget what a scary fucker you really are."
Yuugi laughs, soft, and everyone relaxes. "Come on, Jounouchi-kun—remember that time in the locker room—"
"Oh, stars, yeah," Jounouchi says, slapping the table. "He shot the wall between—friggin' singed Johnny's—uh—bet Johnny still keeps his legs crossed!"
"It was an amazing shot," Yuugi says. "I can't forget the look on his face."
"It was a good shot," Ryou agrees. Easier than it should have been. He remembers the cold blasting his face, the sweat soaking his uniform. Two savage eyes behind the visor of an antique Diabound—
It was two years ago, on Goryo, deep in the slums, four years since the war—
—The alleyway stinks of fish.
"What the fuck do you mean, you don't remember?"
Mai is inside a low-roofed weapons storage, raising hell. Ryou can hear things smashing—Mai shouting, the owner's voice climbing in a buzzing whine. It's only their third run together, but he sees the wisdom of the pairing. Mai "Bloody" Valentine is all tumbling sunshine curls and sweet perfume and slick purple leather—but she's the Iron Bitch for a reason. Recalcitrants beware: retired Second Lieutenant Mai shoots for the kneecaps.
The contact has begun to wail when Ryou notices him—red jacket slung over his shoulder, young and lean and hobbling like octogenarian down the street, his head covered.
A nervous thrill goes up Ryou's back. The man falters at the mouth of the alley, and Ryou is beside him at once, propping him up.
"You limp," he observes.
Suddenly there is a knife pressing against his side, the cold of the blade radiating through his T-shirt, sharp between his ribs.
Cold and easy, Bakura says, "Shot down during the war; leg's never been the same. Still piloting?"
Ryou swallows hard. "Civilian now," he lies. His heart is fluttering between his ribs like a bird in a cage. If the knife turns and slides, he knows it will puncture a lung. He will be dead long before Mai comes back. He imagines falling into the salt dust, gasping his last with Bakura's foot on his face, Bakura's heel grinding into his cheek.
He can't move his arms. Bakura has him pinned against the mud brick of the alley wall.
Let me go, Ryou tries to say. "I thought I killed you," he says instead. His voice is shaking. He tries to smile.
Bakura grins, dark and savage, more than a little mad. "I'll never die," he says. The knife slips up, a slow horrible arc, and comes to press against Ryou's jugular. It is blunt. The edge has been warmed by his body. The hand that holds it—Bakura's hand—is hot and dry, burning against Ryou's throat.
I didn't miss! Ryou thinks, hysterically. He should be dead. He should be—
Ryou swallows again, with a click. "Don't," he says finally. "Let me go. You'll regret it if—"
Bakura gives a bark of laughter, drowning him out, and then he leans forward and kisses Ryou, black eyes lidded, mouth wide as though to swallow him, pressing so close Ryou feels smothered.
"Give me a reason to regret it," Bakura says, low, and Ryou cries out as the knife draws a thin burning line across his breastbone.
"The war minister," Ryou gasps. He can barely breathe. "The war minister is expecting you. They've tripled the guard and installed a look-alike—unnh, oh God—"
Bakura straightens with deliberate care, licking the last drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Civilian my ass," he says, and then he is gone.
Ryou sags against the wall, frazzled and boneless. The knife lies in the dust at his feet.
—Jounouchi takes the last piece of meat. "So you're heading out again soon, I guess? Probably, huh?"
Ryou starts. "Oh—Saturday—next Saturday."
"So we can keep you a few more days," Yuugi says, smiling. The alcohol has turned him bright red. "You should stop by the shop sometime, Ryou-kun. Grandpa misses you; he's always asking, you know, 'Where did that Ryou fellow get off to? What a sweet, polite boy,' and so on."
Jounouchi chuckles. "Sweet boy? This guy is a killer! Mr. Ace Pilot!"
"I wanted to talk to Sugoroku-san," Ryou says slowly. "Do you need a delivery boy? I'm thinking of quitting my job."
General exclamations around the table.
"Why?" Yuugi says. "I thought you really liked your job, Ryou-kun—"
Ryou and Yuugi were colony babies—some of the first. They knew each other vaguely at Domino chuugakkou, but true acquaintance began in pilot training. They slept in the same corridor, flew in the same squadron, together always until a skirmish in the last month of the war, where Yuugi's back was broken and Jounouchi blinded in one eye trying to protect him. Yuugi's grandfather was quick to hire them—shanghaied us, more like, pervy old man, Jounouchi grouses each time, but cheerfully. Yes, Grandpa, Yuugi never fails to add, we're very grateful.
The Turtle Shop sits by the river. At surface-level it is a basic repair shop; smaller ships are upgraded, parts replaced. Mutou Sugoroku, retired pilot and mechanic, builder and repairer of suits, keeps his renovated suits in a cavernous basement—the 2029 Cyclops, the 2044 Koumori, the ancient 1914 Kaiser. Sleeping giants.
—"It's tiring," Ryou says. He avoids Yuugi's eyes.
"Getting old, huh?" Jounouchi says, with a sympathetic nod. "I understand. My head's the same way. Hurts when the comets go by."
"God and Buddha, take better care of yourselves," Anzu admonishes. "You're only in your twenties!"
"Well, that's what happens, when you pilot," Jounouchi says. "Body can't take the stress. We're all breaking down! I'll tell you what, Anzu-chan, you'd better go for Honda. He's the real spring chicken, out of all of us—"
"Oh, no!" Anzu says, laughing again. "I wouldn't. Never."
"Hey," Honda says. "I'm hurt. What does Yuugi have that I don't have, huh? Is he radioactive?"
Jounouchi leers. "Radioactive in bed!"
Yuugi exclaims and socks him in the shoulder. "You big doofus—listen, Honda-kun, I am eighteen times the man you will ever be. And I'm radioactive. And I glow in the dark. In bed. And—"
He ends up on the table, pounding his chest with a fist. Anzu has buried her head in Jou's shoulder, really crying with laughter, and Honda is bent double, howling. It was a long, sleepless flight and Ryou is tired now, tired to his bones, but they are so bright and alive he can't help staying, watching them.
It is nine-past-one—nearly curfew—when he gets up to go.
"Well," Jounouchi says, shuffling awkwardly, "have a good trip."
"Thanks," Ryou says. He feels distant, oddly wobbly—he flashes back to the interior of the Toryu's cockpit, recalls the humming of the seat beneath him and sees his water canteen jammed in between the seat cushions. Too late to go back for it now.
"Take care of yourself," Anzu says; "See you," says Honda, and "Come by anytime. Drinks on the house."
"Thanks," Ryou says again.
"Listen," Yuugi says, with another of his penetrating stares, "don't disappear without saying goodbye. Have dinner with us on Wednesday—my place, seven o'clock. I'll mention it to Grandpa—what you said."
Ryou looks past him, over him. "Yeah, Yuugi-kun," he says swiftly, and "Thanks," a third time. "Best of luck," he says to all of them. "See you later."
Except for Yuugi, they have turned back to each other, Honda about to say something. Ryou slips toward the door.
Jounouchi's voice stalls him. "You'll be back for the wedding, right, Ryou?"
"I think so," Ryou says, after a moment, and he walks out into the cool March night.
03. Ryou cashes a paycheck and spends most of the week using it up. Thicker sweaters are on the agenda. It is always too cold in space.
In the mornings he goes for a run—eight kilometers, slow and easy, following the river to the clock tower and back. He weaves around stationary objects, jogging leisurely circles around lampposts, and slips languidly between moving ones, brushing shirt sleeves and long unbound hair. Everything is perfectly in order, his arms and legs pumping with smooth, glossy movement. The growing pain of each breath keeps him from floating away.
Wednesday evening, at seven o'clock, he calls headquarters and goes to bed early. Thursday he reads files, from noon to midnight, and reviews the flight plans.
Friday afternoon finds him standing by his family's grave plot, wondering what there is to say. It's five p.m. and the mirror panels have yet to pull back. The Kado River murmurs in the background, golden in the sunlight.
The cemetery is quiet and deserted, sloping down gently toward the river. There are only two hundred or so marked graves, for the dead colonizers and their children, the first generation—no bodies, only ash. Domino Temple prays for those who have been lost in space, that their orbiting bodies may find peace.
Since the war, it is not unusual to come across a "dead suit." Sometimes parts are salvaged. More often they are left alone.
Ryou's father is probably among these, orbiting some star in the dead silence of space, if his suit hasn't fallen into the atmosphere and burned away. It has been nineteen years since he broke formation and vanished into the Deva system, his trail swallowed up by gas clouds.
The official colony register lists the names and dates: birth, death, missing in action, presumed dead. Mother-Sister-Father. In the cemetery, though, there is only the rounded stele overwhelmed by the larger granite monuments to its left and right, cut stone inscribed with red ink: INOUE.
The ue is fading, and Ryou traces a finger through the grooves in the stone. The incense smolders in its plate, sweet and smoky.
Well, Amane-chan—
Well, Yuugi-kun will need a wedding present.
And: Must speak to Brigadier Ishtal before I leave—
"I thought I'd find you here."
—ah.
"Yuugi-kun," he greets, without turning. Artificial rain has left the grass damp and soft; Yuugi's footfalls barely register as he comes closer. "How are you?"
"You didn't come to dinner."
"Ah—no. I'm sorry—" He adds something about the Toryu's engine, a checkup, a meeting—Wednesday night, and You know how HQ is.
Somewhat reproachfully: "Grandpa and I could have done that for you, you know."
"I know," Ryou says. "I'm sorry—really. It slipped my mind. . ."
"I feel like—" and Yuugi sits down, folding in on himself, staring out over the river "—I feel like one day you're just going to vanish." He's still in his work clothes, tattered T-shirt and jeans and the ever-present garage keys. "I always felt that."
"Yuugi-k. . ."
Yuugi goes on: "You know—the war chewed me up. I'll never be the same. But I can't say it touched you. You were always so. . ."
"Calm?" Ryou smiles. "Well—"
The physician's assistant has dropped her clipboard. Ryou stares at her. Six hours after the raid, and his hands have finally stopped shaking. He feels fine—not even tired. Nothing can possibly be wrong.
Major Ishtal materializes, presses something cold and flimsy into his right palm. "Corporal."
Compact mirror. Ryou flips it open and looks, and then he snaps it shut and hands it back. He smiles; something creaks. "Major, there's something wrong with your mirror."
"Nothing wrong with my mirror, Corporal: you're bleeding."
"Just a scratch. Grazed my skull. The rest is—" Nosaka's.
Here they come! Nosaka screams. Ryou remembers taking aim. He does not remember firing. What he does remember: running like hell and the pain of every inhalation and the intoxicating joy of takeoff, the faint warmth and the burning blood on his face—and the cold: the marvelous, empty cold of space, nothing but the titanium of his suit holding back the stars, holding him together against the brilliant fireball in the blackness—Mission accomplished, Nosaka!
"It's all yours, Corporal," Ishtal tells him. "Every last drop."
"Ah," Ryou says succinctly, stupidly. Of course it can't be Nosaka's. Nosaka is dead. He feels the tremors in his fingers again. He squeezes his hands between his thighs. "But I'm all right, Major."
—"Detached," Yuugi says, frowning up at him. The red in his hair glints in the sun. "It was like you weren't even there. But for the rest of us, the war—"
"I was scared," Ryou says, low. "I was scared out of my mind."
Yuugi flushes. "Sorry. That's not what I meant. It's just—how can I say it?—I feel like I'm still fighting to reach you, sometimes."
"I'm right here, Yuugi-kun," Ryou says finally.
Ten minutes pass before Yuugi jumps and snatches at his bag, rifling through it. "I forgot," he says, upending the whole satchel into the grass—wrenches, a pocketbook, greasecloths, several lumpy paper packets. "Really am getting old. Sandwiches—from Grandpa. Have you eaten? 'M starving."
Mutou Sugoroku is a total eccentric. Ryou takes a sandwich—thick with lettuce, and only lettuce—and turns it in his hands, staring at it.
Yuugi, about to bite, grins, sheepish. "He forgets the bread, too, sometimes."
Sugoroku has never had anything good to say about Ryou's father, who left behind a dying wife and daughter when he went to find Earth—
Maybe, Ryou suggests, he thought Earth could cure them.
Then he should have taken them along, the damned lugnut, Sugoroku grumbles, and Yuugi shushes him, apologetically. Grandpa.
—They eat as they walk from the cemetery, and Ryou gripes, among other things, about the Toryu's heater. Nothing wrong with the navigation, he says; it runs as smooth as a cylinder colony, but it gets so bloody cold.
Yuugi does not have a very helpful diagnosis. "I'd have to see it," he says, and laughs. "It's probably getting old, like me."
"Say," Yuugi says, as they come to the footbridge over Kado River, "there's still time tonight. Bring it to the shop—Grandpa and I can have a look."
"I'm taking a newer model out tomorrow, anyway," Ryou says, maybe too quickly, and Yuugi's smile goes flat. Shit. "Er—"
"Well, all right," Yuugi says, looking away. "Next time, then."
04. 0300 GMT Saturday, Ryou pulls out of South Bay. The KaibaCorp Minotaur feels weird under him: so small and light, practically a shell.
He gets his first glimpse of Baek two hundred and twenty-eight hours later, nose dripping and feet numb. It is no bigger than a two-yuan star chip, nearly blotted out by the light from its closest star, Šilla, and looks as though it could fit easily in the palm of his hand. The atmosphere is thin; as he gets nearer he sees every detail of the cloudless, mottled surface—rich yellows and barren whites, speckled with oases. A desert planet no larger than a Bernal colony, with all of three precious rivers running across its surface: Baek, planet of the white dunes. Ryou can see the gray of the cities as he prepares for entry, clustered about those thin dark lines of blue. A monarchy grown from the wreckage of a colonial ship flying off course—an ancient world, civilization restarted.
The landing is unexpectedly rough, and he comes into the dock bruised and shaken. He pulls off his sweater and climbs out of the cockpit into dry desert heat, wondering at his trembling hands.
Baek is a riot of sound and light. A bazaar, overgrown, deafeningly loud, seeps into the dock grounds. A Maltese cat lazes beside a stall of fine ceramic ware; a young woman in filmy linens reaches out to examine a golden chain, her voice shrill. Merchants and patrons hung with clattering bangles and beads haggle viciously in a guttural Baekan dialect. Pottery is kicked and broken; a minor brawl erupts.
There is no one waiting to greet him. Ryou lingers fifteen minutes, rubbing sand from his eyes, and finally sets off alone, drawing his sweater up over his nose and mouth.
The package is a fat square of titanium, small enough and light enough to be carried with one hand. At most he expects precious stones, family keepsakes—nothing politically important enough to warrant a request for the protection of the Alliance.
All the same, he takes stock of his items: the package, the sweater, the Leogun in his belt, the knife at his thigh—
The scars on his chest are pale and pearly, forming a neat circle. Clothed, he does not remember them. But wiping the steam from the mirror in the mornings—in curling, nonsensical, finger-drawn patterns—he notices them anew and recalls the hot press of Bakura's mouth, the suction, the sting.
He does not try to suppress the memory. But his gun is always loaded. It will not happen again.
—The Bit-Atem, the House, the great palace of Baek, rises into view beyond a thick and towering mud-brick wall. One courtyard widens into another, the path surrounded by jeweled trees and segmented by huge, impressive gates, each glazed blue and emblazoned with golden lions, crocodiles, demonic birds. At every gate there stands a guard, and there are twelve guards in all—one, Ryou thinks, for each heavenly guardian in the pantheon. He gives his name, states his business, and clears the security checks without trouble.
It is at the entrance to the court where the confusion begins.
"My lord," the herald says, firmly, "that cannot be right. I have announced already an emissary of the great empire, some hours earlier. The Sun has deigned to speak with him. He kneels within."
"I arrived at the time that was agreed upon," Ryou says. "Am I to understand—"
"There cannot be two," the herald insists. "He was properly met and escorted. I have announced him."
"You've made a mistake," Ryou says. He produces his identification and the titanium package, one in each hand. "Did the previous emissary carry these?"
"No," the herald says, bewildered; "the card, yes, but he had something larger, a case—"
Adrenaline begins to flow.
"You've let in the wrong man," Ryou says. "It's dangerous. You've endangered the king."
The man's face drains of blood. He says something in Baekan; Ryou understands it to mean Liar.
"I'm not lying," Ryou says. "Please! You've got to let me in."
"No weapons—" The herald makes a half-hearted attempt to restrain him. Ryou slips past, puts both hands on the door and waits to be tackled. When nothing happens, he pushes.
The walls are lined with guards. The spears they hold are golden, ceremonial, wholly ineffective. Five people take center stage: a lithe young man enthroned, the triple crown of Baek on his head; the two men and a woman beside him in shining robes; and the long, lean shape bowing before them on the cool glazed brick. Ryou's breath comes to a rasping halt in his throat. He can't move; he can't speak. He sees, very clearly, Bakura's dark hand slipping into the case, closing around the gun inside.
"Šilla," the herald shouts from behind him, "dur-šarrukin—"
The king rises to his feet; his viziers step forward—
"B—" Ryou can't draw the breath to shout. He reaches for the Leogun and the herald barrels into him from behind, seizing him around the waist and dragging him bodily backward.
Bakura's arm sweeps out in a silver arc, blurring. Too late, Ryou follows the trajectory and realizes—
The shot shakes the inner court like an explosion and sprays the king with gore; one of the two male viziers reels back and crumples. The entry wound is small, a neat hole in the forehead, but Ryou knows the back of his head has been blown away. The blood pools and trickles.
Commotion.
The king is on his knees, cradling the body, wailing; the woman vizier whirls, screaming orders. None of it matters: Bakura is coming toward him. Ryou has cocked his gun, has his finger on the trigger—the shot goes wild as the herald knees him in the back and brings a hand crashing down on his wrist. The Leogun discharges again as it flies out of his hands.
Bakura is getting away.
The herald is aiming another chop. Ryou gets him around the neck and slams his head into the great golden door—once, twice.
"Your suits," he says. His voice sounds strange in his ears, tinny and breathless. "Where are your suits?"
05. They talk about finding Earth, late at night on the space station, polishing up their suits, running the soft cloth over the titanium until it gleams—staring out into the stars and the vague fog of the Deva system spinning in the East.
They talk about the stars they could see on home colonies, the planets. The memory of Earth—that bleak destroyed place—lingers. It's been light years and the universe is only getting bigger, but no one can forget.
They trade theories: There was never an Earth, only a collective memory, a myth. Earth has been swallowed up by the old sun. Or—there was no holocaust; there are still humans on Earth, going about their lives. Jounouchi is in favor of dragons—that draws some laughter. But the favorite among the cadets is that the Earth is empty but growing anew. Silence as they consider it; then smiling agreement. They are children who have grown up in planned cities, among machinery and titanium and concrete, who put themselves into suits to die for mining belts. Yes: the Earth is blue and green, teeming with vines, every plant they can remember or have read about or can imagine—mountains, valleys, undersea trenches. Coral and jungles and the little green leaves in the spring, baby-soft—real seasons, the pleasant heat of summer on Earth.
Ryou thinks of the cities, the people who couldn't make it out in time. By now there are not even ashes.
The Baek suit—there is only one, glimmering faintly on its golden throne—is not an antique but an archaeological artifact. Ryou catches himself hissing with frustration as he checks the controls—all manual, a giant mechanical sock puppet. The pilot restraints have rotted away. He's never seen a model like this, but he can recognize the bulging reactor behind the pilot-seat, huge and inefficient, the complete lack of any flight mechanism. It is exactly the sort of machine Yuugi's grandfather would give up a leg to restore—a bloody museum piece.
But it works. Ryou flips the switches, and the reactor comes to life with a deep, rich vibration. The cockpit glows red and hot. He wrenches the controls and powers it forward, one foot after the other.
The guards are sprinting across the courtyards, light ricocheting wildly across the steel of their ancient guns. They scatter when they see the suit—some throw themselves down, thinking their king stands before them, has come to fight for them.
Ryou clatters by: left, right—
Left, right. The training dome dwarfs his suit. Ryou flexes his fingers around the controls and takes another step. His heart is somewhere in his throat, shaking his body with every beat. On the other side of the line Yuugi raises his hand, giant and steel-plated, in mock salute.
—"Bakura!"—
"Nice and easy, Mr. Inoue, Mr. Mutou!"
Yuugi yells, high-pitched and hilarious, and Ryou thinks of Yuugi's little body, floating and lit with the green light of the controls—a glancing blow like a brush of the fingers, and Ryou waddles forward—
—The Necrofear pivots with a grace that makes him ache. Sunlight flares off the blackened vambraces, and then the machine is running at him, shaking the ground. Bakura howls, and the sound of it tears upward from the depths of the cavernous chest, hollow and inhuman: screaming wind. Ryou brings his arm up just in time to block the first wild swing. The impact rattles his teeth; he digs in his heels and the Baek suit, miraculously, finds foothold in the sand, stops skidding.
"Bakura—"
Bakura screams again and brings the left arm of the Necrofear crashing down, and now Ryou has both arms over his head, bracing. The Baek suit is being pushed into the ground—
"I think I shot him down. . ."
Like hell!
—Almost on his knees. Any lower and Bakura will have free access to the back of his neck—
Like hell anyone could shoot Bakura down!
Ryou drops his arms—Come on come on yes!—and the Baek suit rolls left—and the ground ruptures where the Necrofear's shining black foot hits it. Sand floods Ryou's helmet in thick, hot, dusty clouds. No time to lie there choking—he rolls again and again, all the while blinking and fumbling for the guns—God in heaven there are no guns—nothing but his two slow meaty hands and an antique fucking ornamental sword—
"Harder, Mr. Inoue; this isn't a tea party; we are not shaking hands—"
—Mostly gold, and all two meters of it sing and warp as Ryou smashes it into the Necrofear's legs, once, twice, shearing the blackened plates away—just enough of a pause to lurch to his feet, and then they are grappling, enormous metal fingers locked. Bakura's hand on his wrist—tight—he can feel the bolts popping—makes it impossible to swing again.
He has to disable to Necrofear's flight mechanism somehow—the reactor, even, if he's lucky—has to get the Baek suit's hand to the back of the Necrofear's neck, deep into the wires—pluck them like harpstrings, delicately, just-so—no better sound than the wet electric squeal of dying machinery, but he can't quite reach—
The Necrofear dances nimbly back, the gadfly to the Baek suit's brooding and ponderous weight, like Bakura isn't piloting a two-tonne pile of metal and circuitry, like it's just Bakura, flying at him, larger than life. Ryou spits sand, shifts his weight, and drives the hilt of the sword into Bakura's side with a shout—
He's hyper aware: of the rubbery quality of the controls beneath his hands, the relentless heat of the day and the oily smell of the machine and the reactor like a lit fire under his legs, the grit and the sweat burning in his eyes, the heartbeat of weightlessness as Bakura belts the Baek suit across the faceplate and the sharp, spicy copper of the blood—his blood—every sense overwhelmed before it all contracts, hurtling to a single white point: the clean, musical crack as the bones of his right arm snap and his own startled exhalation—a sigh, really—
Bakura hits the Baek suit again and Ryou topples from his seat, tumbling into the left leg socket—broken wire mesh scores his face, draws hot lines across his shoulders—jarring impact, the leg control pedal striking his back like a kick to the ribs—
Blackness recedes: Bakura is pawing at the Baek suit, oddly clumsy, trying to crush the bevor. The metal crumples like gold-leaf under the assault—
Wide open, Mr. Inoue!
Wide open—do anything—duck run crawl move—Stop him!
He feels the weight of the Necrofear, insubstantial, flimsy, and shoves the control pedal with arm and foot, bracing his throbbing back against the hot metal plates of the leg socket—the knee of the Baek suit swings up and up and crashes into the Necrofear—again—again—
The shriek of metal rending metal, and Bakura reels back—
Ryou presses his cheek into the side of the socket and kicks with his legs, fighting his way up with his left elbow, scrabbling for the controls, which are wet, slippery with sweat and blood and oil—the faceplate is bent to hell and there is sand everywhere, grinding down the gears, clogging his throat. He can't see Bakura; he can't see anything—
A buzzing whine in his ears, in his ribcage—uncomfortable heat—the beginnings of burns on his calves—
The reactor!
"No," Ryou says, thickly, "no, no—fuck—"
The controls scorch his hand, his face. He gropes for the release switch and the battered faceplate falls away, to shouts of alarm on the ground. Molten sunlight floods the chest cavity; sand and waves of red heat billow inward. The Necrofear is a glimmering black dot as it disappears into the atmosphere.
Bakura is getting away.
He loses his footing as he climbs from the cockpit, right arm dangling uselessly. The air is icy as it streams across his face. It is possible he screams when he hits the ground, sucking blood and dirt into his mouth—
The jagged edges of bone sparkle absurdly—
—but soon enough it all goes white.